Even with Americans Stuck at Home, Weather Forecasts are an Integral Part of Life
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By Sean Potter.
Americans have an insatiable appetite for weather, and the unusual winter blast expected across parts of the East this weekend — along with a continued heat wave out West — will only add to the feeding frenzy for forecasts. Americans are paying attention to the weather, and not just as a way to escape news of the covid-19 pandemic. A 2018 study by Pew Research Center showed that 70 percent of U.S. adults say weather information is important to their daily lives — more so than any other local news topic.
The ease of accessing weather forecasts today — including through smartphone apps or by engaging Alexa or Siri — has made it increasingly possible to assume that forecasts will always be there when we need them and, perhaps, always have been. But weather forecasts rooted in scientific methods, and a federally funded service to provide them, are relatively new in the larger scheme of scientific endeavors and the human experience.
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